If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s the phrase, anyway. But here, it’s also the question, because I already reviewed the fifth and final season of The Bear once, and I still didn’t feel like I adequately explained why it didn’t work for me. Then I looked at that 97% Rotten Tomatoes score and realized just how far into the minority I’m going to be when I put up a Rotten review for this show. So I wanted to come back and really pin down why. The best explanation I can give is surprisingly simple: Season 5 doesn’t do what it needs to do. It relies far too heavily on the work the previous four seasons already did, expecting the emotional investment we already have in these characters to carry a final season that gives them surprisingly little new material.

The final season feels incredibly limited. Most of Episodes 1 through 7 take place across essentially one day, during a torrential storm wreaking havoc on Chicago, as The Bear runs out of money, supplies and staff while trying to pull off one final great service. There’s certainly tension in that premise. At one point, Richie is told to cancel reservations because they aren’t sure they can actually seat and feed everyone, but instead they press forward and creatively find ways to make it work. The problem is that the first three episodes feel like they could have been condensed into one, or certainly no more than two. Meanwhile, the separately released “Gary,” the flashback episode featuring Richie and Mikey, has far more dramatic depth because it does something The Bear used to do brilliantly: it continues shaping its characters. I would have rather seen that incorporated into the final run than watch the season stretch this one service across so much time. Previous seasons sent characters across Chicago and even overseas to improve their craft. Here, almost everybody is stuck at The Bear. It might have made for an easier shoot with a cast that has become increasingly in demand, but it also makes for a smaller final season.

Some of the most touching moments work precisely because earlier seasons already did the heavy lifting. Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto (Abby Elliott) has entrusted her daughter Sophie to Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), although Natalie is so nervous about it that she’s essentially spying on her mother. Eventually, she asks Donna to bring Sophie to The Bear. The payoff isn’t really that Season 5 spends substantial time showing us how Donna has changed as a grandmother or how Natalie and Donna have repaired their relationship. The payoff is simply that Donna walks into The Bear. That means something because of everything we know about Donna and this restaurant from previous seasons. Jamie Lee Curtis remains terrific, and Donna finding the scrapbook gives her some emotional material, but Season 5 doesn’t invest in her the way previous seasons did. The same is true of the near-total absence of Jon Bernthal’s Mikey. The Bear has repeatedly gone backward in time to expand a character who died before the series began, and “Gary” proves there was still material there. Instead, the final season mostly asks us to remember what these relationships meant rather than continuing to deepen them.

Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) might be the clearest example of the problem. His future outside the kitchen is one of the major questions, as is whether he has any future with Claire (Molly Gordon), who is basically an idea this season rather than an active presence in his life. Carmy’s anxiety, his complicated relationship with cooking and his inability to determine what actually makes him happy have defined the series. But we’ve already watched him wrestle with all of those things. We’ve watched him work on his relationship with Claire. We’ve watched him become better at recognizing and managing his anxiety. We’ve watched him question whether this restaurant, inherited after his brother’s suicide, is actually what he wants his life to be. Season 5 eventually gives him a direction outside the kitchen, but I wanted to watch more of that transformation instead of getting the answer after so much of the season keeps him in the same restaurant, helping Sydney get through one final service. Give me Carmy figuring out what comes next. Give me a meaningful reckoning with Claire. Have him decide he wants marriage, kids, architecture, Toledo, competitive llama grooming, anything. Challenge him with something new.

Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) has probably undergone my favorite transformation in the entire series. He started as my least favorite character and became my favorite, going from an obnoxious tool to an incredibly empathetic and thoughtful person who understands hospitality in a way nobody would have expected when we first met him. But Season 5 doesn’t really create that Richie. It cashes the check written by the previous four seasons. Even the car accident teased in “Gary” ultimately seems designed mostly to delay him during the storm rather than fundamentally alter his trajectory. His opportunity to travel to Japan is a wonderful reward, and his growing connection with Jess (Sarah Ramos) gives him a positive direction, but I wish the season had spent more time connecting that success to his life as a father. Let his daughter Eva see what her dad has become. Let him really celebrate this transformation with the family outside The Bear as well as the family inside it. Richie’s ending works because Ebon Moss-Bachrach and the writers spent four seasons earning it, not because Season 5 discovers some new layer to him.

That problem spreads throughout the ensemble. Natalie spends much of the season stressed out over the finances, trying to keep the restaurant alive while everyone else is in the kitchen, although at least Pete (Chris Witaske) gives her something outside the office. Marcus (Lionel Boyce) spends much of the service clashing with Luca (Will Poulter), his former mentor, while also dealing with the arrival of his estranged father. Marcus finally getting that moment with his father should be enormous, but it feels frustratingly brief considering how much emotional weight has been attached to it. I wanted to sit with Marcus afterward. I wanted that conversation. I wanted to see what it changed. We once watched Marcus travel to Copenhagen and put in the work to become a great pastry chef. We watched his relationship with his mother, which gave him a richness that this season never quite matches with his father. Likewise, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) has spent years growing into the chef capable of leading this restaurant, and Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas) went from being part of the staff to someone important enough that Colón-Zayas won an Emmy playing her. Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson), Neil Fak (Matty Matheson) and the rest all get their moments, but so much of Season 5 feels like moving pieces into their final positions instead of discovering something new about them.

That’s what The Bear used to do better than almost any other show. It took characters who could have remained background players and made us love them. Some of its greatest episodes barely needed The Bear itself. Think about “Fishes.” Think about Natalie giving birth with Donna by her side. Think about Marcus learning in Copenhagen. Think about Richie’s evolution. Those episodes took us outside the restaurant and reminded us these people had lives beyond their jobs. Then, when everybody came back together, it felt like hanging out with people we actually knew. That balance gave the restaurant its power. Season 5 reverses the equation and makes the restaurant the center of almost everything, apparently believing that putting all these people in the same room one last time is enough. For me, it isn’t. I don’t think there’s an episode this season I would put in my Top 10 episodes of The Bear. I’m not even sure one cracks my Top 20.

The finale does improve things because at least it provides some positive direction. Carmy looks toward a life beyond cooking, Sydney assumes control of The Bear, Tina gets promoted, Marcus gets his own path forward, Richie gets Japan, and the restaurant itself achieves the kind of recognition everyone has been chasing. Nobody dies in a kitchen fire, and we don’t suddenly discover the whole series happened inside a snow globe in some St. Elsewhere stunt ending. It’s not Newhart. But even when the finale gives us answers, I still felt like much of what I was responding to emotionally was payoff from work that had already been done. Season 5 feels less like a final chapter and more like an extended resolution. Honestly, I wonder if The Bear needed a movie instead of an eight-episode final season. Condense this material, make that last service the centerpiece and suddenly I think a lot of this works better.

Even when I think about the performances, I run into the same problem. Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri are terrific because they’re terrific. Jamie Lee Curtis remains one of the smartest casting decisions the show ever made. Lionel Boyce, Abby Elliott, Liza Colón-Zayas and the rest of this ensemble know these characters inside and out. But in previous seasons, I knew exactly which performances I wanted to champion when awards voting came around because somebody had been given a new challenge, a great standalone episode or some astonishing piece of material. Who gets that in Season 5? Who has the episode where I immediately think, there’s the Emmy submission? The cast is still excellent, but I’m largely celebrating what these performers have accomplished across five seasons rather than something Season 5 specifically gave them.

The audio description remains a bright spot, thankfully continuing to use a human narrator, with Roy Samuelson providing the narration. I didn’t catch a company or the rest of the audio description team credited, so apparently Roy magically manifested the entire thing himself. Whoever was responsible for the writing, editing and sound mixing deserves credit alongside Samuelson because there are some terrific choices here. I particularly appreciated something as simple as describing a cherry as a bright red cherry. That little bit of specificity helps make the food appetizing, and I’ve wanted food-based shows like Top Chef to understand this for years. Sighted audiences look at these dishes and think, I wish I could eat that. Audio description should be trying to create the same response for blind audiences, and The Bear makes a real effort to describe its food in a way that lets us participate in that experience.

I don’t hate Season 5. I’m not angry at it. I’m disappointed by it, which might actually be worse considering how much I love The Bear. I know plenty of people thought Seasons 3 and 4 were weaker, but I liked the first four seasons, with Seasons 2 and 3 probably being my favorites. That’s why I can’t simply give this season a pass because I love these characters. To me, Season 5 feels like the fifth sequel in a movie franchise where everyone assumes you’ll buy another ticket because the cast came back. It breaks from the structure that helped make the series special, rarely challenges these characters with anything genuinely new and spends too much time celebrating growth that happened before this season started. Yes, they get one final service. Yes, they get one last opportunity to be great. And they are great. Unfortunately for Season 5, The Bear has always been better than great. This isn’t a one-Michelin-star show. It’s a two-Michelin-star show. And when you’ve raised the bar that high, merely serving something good can still leave your audience hungry.

Rotten: 5.9/10